Why Leading Beatnik Poet Allen Ginsberg Was a Crusader for Legalizing LSD | Alternet
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Quand Alan Ginsberg va devant le Sénat pour défendre le LSD
Ginsberg finally told of an LSD experience at Big Sur last fall. It was his first in several years, he said, and was shortly before the Berkeley Vietnam demonstrations. “We were all confused . . . many angry marchers blamed the President for the situation we were in. I did, too. The day I took LSD was the same day that President Johnson went into the operating room for his gall bladder illness. As I walked through the forest wondering what my feelings toward him were . . . the awesome place I was in impressed me with its old tree and ocean cliff majesty. Many tiny jeweled violet flowers along the path of a living brook that looked like Blake’s Illustration of a canal in grassy Eden: huge Pacific watery shore. I saw a friend dancing long haired before giant green waves, under cliffs of titanic nature that Wordsworth described in his poetry, and a great yellow sun veiled with mist hanging over the planet’s ocean horizon. Armies at war on the other side of the planet . . . and the President in the valley of the shadow—himself experiences what fear or grief? I realized that more vile words from me would send out negative vibrations into the atmosphere—more hatred against his poor flesh and soul on trial—so I knelt on the sand surrounded by masses of green kelp washed up by a storm, and prayed for President Johnson’s tranquil health.”